Much of the outdoor foliage trials are now well into harvest including the hypericum, snowberries, Ivy, Cotinus and Viburnum. These have been sampled to a number of different outlets and are receiving a favourable response.
The Zinnia continue to crop and crop – we picked the first flowers in July and it looks like they will still be cropping into October. The vase life tests undertaken by FloraLife have been encouraging but there is still further work to do with this crop. There are clear varietal differences as regards performance and they do respond favourably to specific post harvest treatments. A full report will be available at the end of the season.
The indoor sunflowers are now starting to be cropped and a number of the varieties are performing very well.
The second flush of Breanthus is struggling, as is the second flush of aster ericoides. Clearly the cold spring has come into play here by delaying the first flush but in 2014 it would be good to look at manipulating the blackout to produce an earlier flush with shorter stems and still give enough time to produce a second flush.
The indoor plantings of lupins have now produced a surprising number of flowers which is enabling some vase life work to be done on them.
